I have been dying to try papercutting because I've seen so many gorgeous things done with it. However, I can't draw worth crap, so I figured I was kind of screwed. Then, brilliantly, I had one of those crafty ideas that just builds on itself. I was looking at wallpapers (the kind for your computer desktop, not your walls ), and there was this technique to get a vector-ish looking image that someone was discussing. Basically, you use a filter in Photoshop called "Cutout". I thought "Hey, that would adapt itself to a papercutting." then "HEY I could do some of my totally awesome MMORPG (Guild Wars) characters." and then I thought "Hey, Valentine's Day is coming up. You know what I bet my boyfriend would appreciate? A freaking Guild Wars card!" I also came up with a game related poem to put inside, which I'm super bloody proud of because I also can't write worth crap. I am a spinning/yarn/resin/fabric/baking kind of girl.

Normally I don't post personal-type stuff, but this just blew my mind, and I figured it could help out someone else looking for something awesome to do for Valentine's Day (or any other holiday. Or just because.)

Images!

The finished card! Christ I am so proud of it. That's my first papercut design! Is that not insane?!

After I adjusted the images in Photoshop (it took forever and a day to get it to something I liked), I made the filled in bits as dark as I could and printed them out. To trace through my fancy thick white paper, I rigged up a spur-of-the-moment lightbox by clipping the paper/printed image to a clipboard, then extending it over the end of a piano bench with a desk light shining up through the bottom.

This may or may not give a better idea of the lightbox type rigging.

Just an image of everything traced out, ready to cut. I think this looks pretty sweet too.

Aaand cutting it out. You can see the printed photoshop image behind the cuts because I didn't bother to remove it until the end. I worked in front of my computer with the image open so I could refer to it constantly and not have to do any creative artistic things on my own.

Oh, and here is my cheesy poem (that I am also super proud of, which is why it goes in the post). If you don't play Guild Wars, you probably won't get it, but you can get a general idea (and see how easy it is to make up your own!). It was actually inspired by a Woot shirt that had Mario/Sonic/Player 2 references, but this is more "us".

I am really interested in doing a personal swap, especially for greener things like reusable lady items, wool dryer balls, or other such things. I can knit, sew, draw, and put things together in pretty neat ways. Please PM me if you're interested.